Man shits himself
A man, in his late 20s, is sitting on the toilet grunting and moaning as he shits out a big log in a decrepit bathroom. There is not really much he can do about the dismal state of his bathroom, or even his flat, after all he lives in a post-consumerist society which lays waste to everything in its path. Just think about the shit that he is shitting out into the shitter and its path through the shitpipe eventually ending up in a cesspit of shite. If only Trump was in one.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly, as should be, two extra-terrestrial beings appear out of nowhere right in front of the man. They are tall and slim with elongated heads and big beady eyes, geometrical tattoos decorated over their bodies and their wrists wrapped in gold bracelets, and what takes the man aback is how luminous blue their auras glow. He is agape with his trousers down sitting on the shitter, his mouth wide open before one of the beings looks down, smiles a wry smile and then proceeds to slap the fuck out of his face to snap him out of his unbelief.
“Hello there Julian, I guess you weren’t expecting us to just appear out of nowhere especially if you’re shitting but that’s exactly why we’re here. You see, we know a lot about you, you’re special to us. We’re aware that you have been thinking most of your life about life, the universe, and everything in between. But we thought we’d start somewhere a little closer to home for you, your shit. You see, it’s a metaphor for all the waste and carelessness in your society. Do you realise where your shit goes?”
“Erm, no.”
“Let me show you.”
The being raises her arm and touches the man instantly enlightening him, due to the being’s DNA being transmitted consciously and with the specific information regarding shit over to the man’s DNA. He is treated to a stream of consciousness going through his mind’s eye following the shit’s process through the sewer system ending up in a sewage treatment plant mixing with the water supply. Eventually he comes out of it and realise that is what he is doing right now: contributing his shit to society.
The other being smiles again, and adds “Let us show you a better way, if you will?”, but still grabs him anyway and disappear into thin air. They appear on another planet, which seems like Earth, but is not.
“Where am I?!” asks the man, in shock.
“You’re on Earth” one of the beings reply.
“But we disappeared into thin air! How can we still be on Earth?”
“This is Earth but in a different dimension. There are infinite parallel dimensions, each one slightly different than the next, so imperceptible that if you shifted into the one right next to the one you were just in you wouldn’t tell the difference.”
“We have taken you to a dimension a few sides along so you might be able to notice a difference, have a look around” added the other being.
The man looks around and starts noticing small things that are now different from his dimension. He stares in disbelief.
“We have taken you here because in this reality, every single shit that is shat out doesn’t go to waste. You see, shit is a by-product of the energy that you take into your bodies, but it is still energy regardless. Here in this reality you can see that every house, town and city in the world draws all their electricity from shit, since all the toilets are fitted with a portable generator which generates electricity every time someone shits.”
The other being turns around, looks at the man and smiles “And of course, there is no limit on how much people can shit.”
They go on a merry tour going from toilet to toilet, shitter to shitter, peeking through the door and waving at people sat on the toilet shitting waving back with beaming smiles.
Eventually they come across a stoner shitting out his munchies, his eyes are bloodshot red and he is feeling baked as fuck. He completes his shit and stands up pulling his trousers up proceeding to press a button on the cistern. The toilet starts to generate electricity which is sent through a pipe into a meter box powering the whole building.
“That was a nice shit” sighs the stoner, “and it’s amazing how I get all the electricity from my shit so I can grow my buds. Let me show you!”
They walk out of the bathroom and into a huge living room full of house plants, but a certain plant stands out, and it truly looks majestic. Gold encrusted leaves and rich golden sticky buds decorate the stem and there is a golden aura emanating from it. The host draws out a golden joint, perfectly rolled up, and sparks up. He takes a few puffs and gives it to the extra-terrestrial beings who are more than happy to indulge, and then the man. They get baked as fuck straightaway and gets enveloped in a smoky haze that fills the room.
Sometime later, the man reappears back in his dimension with the extra-terrestrial beings, who drops him off at his apartment.
“That was fun! Can you take me to another dimension again? What about your planet?” asks the man.
“Yeah it was fun, but we cannot take you again, at least not right now. That was just a glimpse of what could be possible in your reality if you people can realise it. You can see just how wasteful your society is in all areas of life, and it might seem insurmountable to change anything. But to change something, there has to be inward change first. And there’s no better place to start with than your own shit.”
“Laters” said the other being, smiling, and then they disappeared into thin air leaving the man with an unforgettable experience.
Taxi driver
“So have you met a deaf person before in your line of work?” the man asked his rather large and pot-bellied friend as they were sitting at a table in a crowded pub. There were a large group of deaf people socialising and drinking at the bar which prompted the man to ask this question as he was intrigued.
“Oh yes, I have! I’ll never forget this one time I met a couple of deaf people” the pot-bellied friend replied. After all he was a taxi driver and he met people from all walks of life while driving them to their destinations.
“Please do tell.”
“Well it was a very bizarre experience. After that night I realised that deaf people are just people. They might have their own ways but they’re still the same as us lot.”
“What do you mean?” asked his friend.
“Well…” the man started to talk.
-
He was steaming drunk when he got into the taxi without waiting for his friend who was a couple of hundred meters behind and around the corner. His friend was also steaming drunk and didn’t have the capacity to keep up with him so it made sense that he was so far behind stumbling and making no sense at all. Maybe he didn’t realise that his friend was following him or thought he went back to the hostel.
The taxi driver didn’t expect to meet someone with a different mode of communication, so he was taken a bit aback when a deaf person entered his taxi and tried to communicate with his phone typing out words and gesturing. Even though the passenger was pretty drunk, he was still trying to make an effort to tell the taxi driver where he wanted to go. The taxi driver was clueless and felt hopeless so he just started to drive, and the longer he drove the further away they were from communicating with each other. The deaf guy didn’t really take notice of where he was going as he was assured that the taxi driver knew where he wanted to go so they went off away from the city and into the middle of nowhere before he noticed it.
Meanwhile his equally, if not drunker, friend stumbled and went around the corner. Only to find that no-one was there. In his drunken stupor he thought that was very strange but shrugged it off and turned back the way he came and into the bar that they were in previously. After attempting to order at the bar several times, he realised that it was closed. Or they refused to serve him due to the state he was in, we’ll never know. But he was desperate for a drink before going to bed in the hostel above the bar and he noticed a half-full pint of beer on an empty table that someone left behind and thought to himself that he’ll have that. So he strode across the bar room and picked it up, gulped it all in one go and sighed in pleasure. Except it didn’t taste quite right, there was a metallic after-taste to it.
He put the empty glass down and proceeded to exit the bar up the stairs when it started to hit him and oh! What a lift off! He was suddenly gurning, his pupils dilated to the maximum and his arms jerking violently as he felt a surge of energy going through him, his body temperature rising and his mind racing with thoughts. He was absolutely restless riding the intense high as it came over him.
And that was when he bumped into his friend with a stranger in the landing of the hostel, eyes wide open while his friend gasped and stared in disbelief back at him. The stranger awkward, not sure what to do except look at them, as they communicated in their language.
“Oh my god! What happened to you?!”
“I don’t know! Who’s this?!” He signed back jerkily, his arms uncontrollable and his face contorting and gurning.
“Erm, he’s a taxi driver. Can you help me?”
“What do you mean?!”
“I got in a taxi and somehow he drove me all the way out of the city before I realised it! And now I need to pay him £50” He sighed.
“Sure! No problem! Follow me!” He signed back full of energy and enthusiasm as he led them outside of the hostel and along the street jerking and twitching.
The taxi driver was staring in amazement, not quite believing what he was seeing as he reluctantly followed them. They arrived at a cash machine when the jerky guy proceeded to withdraw £50 and handed it to the taxi driver hugging him enthusiastically and smiling the widest wide-eyes smile as if he was a maniac. The taxi driver stood there frozen in fear as he accepted the money. And then they walked away leaving him alone to process the whole situation.
-
“I look back on that a lot and wonder why it happened. Maybe I misread his message on his phone when he got in the taxi but he was so drunk so I’m still not sure.” The taxi driver said as he sipped from his pint.
“So…you’re saying deaf people love to party and let loose?” his friend asked.
“Sure! I mean, look at the crowd over there. What do you think they’re doing right now?”
His friend looked up towards the deaf crowd and raised his eyebrows as to realise that it was obvious.
“Maybe if I knew a few signs then it could have been easier to communicate. But that was the first time I met deaf people so I didn’t realise. Now I know that they are just like us all. They like to have fun and enjoy life even if it means that sometimes they go overboard. That happens to everyone.” He spoke as he sipped his beer again.
He added “It’s like that William Blake poem, The Fly. Do you know it?”
“No” his friend replied.
“One of the verses goes like this ‘For I dance and drink and sing, till some blind hand shall brush my wing’. What the poem really means is that we are all equal in the face of death, no matter our differences or rather the appearance of difference.”
“I see. So you’re saying that we are deaf people then?”
“Yeah! You could put it like that” The taxi driver smiled and looked to the crowd, raised his pint towards them and smiled as they looked with perplexed faces and awkwardly raising their glasses back at him.
the golden snitch
The man took his seat on the train heading to London King’s Cross. It was a bright day; the sun shined through the clouds and the train traveled over rolling hills of green. The man looked out through the window and admired the view, taking it all in. He couldn’t help but smile at the luscious rolling hills of green grass and trees scattered all over the landscape. As the train shuttered and sped along the tracks, the man thought to himself how glorious it all looked.
He proceeded to take a book out from his bag that laid in the vacant seat next to his own. The book was an obscure philosophical work by a little-known author in the 18th Century - if the man mentioned the title or the author’s name to someone, they would most likely say they didn’t know what he was talking about. It was such a complex body of text that even the man struggled to comprehend it himself, but he still enjoyed reading it nonetheless.
It was a challenging read, challenging to his own pre-made convictions and world views. The piece challenged the minds of the readers so much that it was difficult to comprehend the diverse perspectives offered by the book. The man couldn’t help but be engrossed in the book. He stopped noticing his surroundings as the train rolled into a provincial town, slowing to a halt at the platform.
Since the train was headed to King’s Cross, there was a surplus of bodies getting on than there were off. As the train left the platform, it sped up past houses, office buildings, and warehouses. It seemed like the new arrivals found their seats easily, except for one girl; who was still searching for a seat through the carriages.
She eventually reached the man’s carriage and settled down in an empty table seat adjacent to the man’s, facing the opposite direction. This was the first time the man broke his focus with his book, and he glanced up to see who sat across the aisle from him. The girl looked back and acknowledged the man with a smile, influencing the man to immediately do the same.
He couldn’t help but think that she was pretty, after all, he was a sucker for pretty faces. But he was also conscious of that, and didn’t want to frighten the woman. He struggled to not stare at the girl while she put her headphones in her ears, listening to music and staring out the window at the passing scenery.
The man continued to read the book he held, but he felt something was off, almost like he was being stared at. As he looked up, he caught the girl looking away in the exact moment. Sure enough, it happened a few more times and the man smirked, asking himself if she was checking him out.
As time went on, the man started to feel a hunger build up in his stomach, thankfully, he had just the perfect thing. He closed his book and placed it on the empty seat next to his bag. He took a sandwich from his bag and sank his teeth in the delicious sustenance, all whilst thinking about the concept he finished reading about in the book.
The man pondered over the concept; the idea we are all ultimately caught up in ourselves and our delusions as the result of a cosmic joke that we play on ourselves. As the man chewed on his nutritious meal, he looked across the aisle at the girl once more and noticed her facial expressions. She looked sad, emotional, as if a metaphorical raincloud overcame her. As he gulped down the last bit of his sandwich, the man came to the conclusion that something was bothering the woman. He could sense the energy emanating from her.
A voice inside the man told him to go over to the woman, to ask her if she was okay. He hesitated for a bit, but then he thought that he could make a difference and possibly help her cheer up. He summoned courage to his side and he went over to her, sitting down at the opposite side of her table.
The girl looked up just as the man began speaking, and she took out her headphones, visibly taken aback that he had approached her and wanted to talk.
“I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not in a good mood, are you ok?” the man asked her tentatively.
“Yeah, I’m not. I’m also not in the mood to talk” the girl responded.
“Alright, I was just checking. I could see something was up with you”
“Yeah, but you’re a stranger so why would I talk with you?” the girl retorted tensely.
“Aren’t we all strangers in a sense anyway?” the man asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“Well we never really know each other. At least not in this reality. And talking with a stranger can help” he explained.
“I suppose so, it’s just hard to talk about though” the girl said, her mood lightening up just a little bit.
“Things are often hard because we think they are” the man added, noticing the girl loosen her composure.
“But it’s not often true, I see your point” the girl chuckled.
The man couldn’t help but think she was even more beautiful in that moment when she smiled.
“So whats’s up?” the man asked her.
The girl took a while to answer, since she was a bit hesitant, but eventually she started to talk. “Erm, it’s kinda complicated. Basically…” she paused and held her hands up with her palms flat and spread out “…my grandma died and I’m just on the way to her funeral. I mean it’s in a few days and I’m going to stay with my family in her hometown in Surrey. The thing is my family and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. I had weird experiences a few years ago and it was kind of a revelation to me but they didn’t believe me when I tried to tell them, especially my dad” she admitted.
“I see and now they’re treating you differently because of that?” the man replied.
“Yeah. I mean they made me feel like I was crazy and something was wrong with me. They even said that they would call the mental health services on me if I didn’t stop telling them stuff that freaked them out.”
“Ah, not an easy situation to be in." the man said, sympathising with the girl.
“Exactly, so I made a decision to leave and go up north”.
“How’d you feel about going up north then?” the man asked.
“I’m happy I made the decision to go up north. I live in a village up there in Yorkshire and it’s pretty peaceful. I’m just nervous about seeing my family later today and over the next few days” the girl said with an anxious face.
“Yeah, I get it. You don’t know how they would react or say to you or even if they would want you there, is that right?” the man asked her.
“Well, they do want me there since it’s my grandma’s funeral and I want to be there to say bye to her. But yeah I’m just not sure if they won’t mention anything about myself to me” answered the girl.
The man nodded as he was taking in what she was saying and tried to think about what to say next. He was curious about her weird experiences so he asked her what they were about.
“I don’t know if you would get them” the girl said in response to his question.
“Try me. I’ve had my share of weird experiences so I’m a pretty open book” the man replied smiling.
“Alright, fair enough. Erm well, I had dreams about my family and it was like these dreams I had were telling me things about my family, about their personalities that they don’t realise themselves. That’s partly why they get so freaked out” sighed the girl as she finished her sentence. The man nodded and had an empathetic expression on his face as he listened. She carried on talking.
“I also keep seeing repeating numbers like 11:11, 12:12 or 555 et cetera. It’s crazy, right?!”
“You and me both” the man laughed.
“Really?! So I’m not the only one then?” the girl asked in total surprise.
“No, you’re not the only one. There’s probably thousands, if not millions, of people who are experiencing this” he continued to smile.
“Wow…” the girl muttered “…I didn’t realise that” feeling really assured after hearing that she wasn’t the only one.
The man smiled at her as the train approached London and the scenery was transitioning from countryside to urban dwellings eventually getting denser and denser.
“Honestly we’re all crazy here in this world. So I think you shouldn’t be telling your family things they don’t want to hear because they won’t be able to handle it. There’s plenty of other like-minded folks you can talk about this stuff with” the man admitted.
“Yeah, that makes sense” the girl smiled feeling elevated for the first time in ages.
The man carried on talking about his own experiences briefly, then stopped and asked her a question.
“Do you like Harry Potter?”
“Yeah I do, I grew up reading all the books over and over” she nodded in response.
“You know the game they have in the books, Quidditch?”
“Of course, that’s my favourite thing about the stories” the girl responded, leaning forward over the table, eager to hear what the man had to say about Quidditch.
“That’s cool to hear. Anyway, you know how the game is played right? There’s a keeper, two beaters, three chasers and a seeker on each team. The keeper’s role is to protect the three hoops, which represents the trinity - at least I think so, from the Quaffle ball going in” and carried on elaborating with visual gestures. “The chasers have the role of passing the Quaffle ball to each other with the aim of scoring in the opposite team’s hoops and it seems like the chasers represents everyday life, or waking life if you will, going after material needs and ego identification” he explained and then took a pause.
“The beaters represents the government or establishment trying to beat every player in the game into unconsciousness and the Bludgers are the tools that the beaters use that represents the methods that they use to keep us all unconscious like propaganda, TV programming, war, prisons, society, addictive junk food and so on. And then we have the seeker, and of course you would know that the seeker is the most important player in the game since his role is to catch the golden snitch and win the game” he paused again and smiled.
“Now this is where it gets very interesting, because the golden snitch represents the truth and is very elusive. It doesn’t simply come for anyone and you have to search for it - that’s why the seeker is called the seeker” he took a deep breath in and finished explaining.
“Wow, I never thought about it like that” the girl commented, astonished as the train slowed down to a halt and arrived at King’s Cross.
The man smiled and knew he fulfilled what he wanted to do, which was cheer her up and blow that raincloud away. He got out of his seat, collected his belongings, and waved at the girl who was still in her seat processing what she just heard. The man got off the train, and as he started walking along the platform, the girl chased after him with her belongings in tow and tapped him on his shoulder. The man turned around and saw it was the girl he was just talking to, she looked at him and smiled.
“You made my day” then hugged him and walked away.
The man stood there with a smile on his face and a warm feeling in his chest looking on at her as she walked off into the distance and back into the rat race.